~ GEORGE BUSH SET WORLD BACK 10 YEARS SAYS BLAIR AIDE ~

When anyone quotes the Guardian, I immediately consider them suspect: the
paper was a notorious critic of going into Iraq and giving the POV of the
French, Russians, and Germans: all countries that opposed the Iraq operation
due to their expected economic gains from the Baathist regime and their past
connections.....Anyone here know that Chirac when he was PM of France met
Saddam and sold Iraq the Osirak reactor that the Israeli AF took out in '81?
With ties like that, French motives are rightly questioned.



"Z" wrote:
We should all use the Taliban as the model for
the perfect world, right !

Z
"~ LITTLE HITLER ~"
wrote in message
...
World Set Back 10 Years by Bush's New World
order, says Blair Aide

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday April 14, 2004
The Guardian

George Bush has had a "devastating impact"
on global sustainable
development and set the world back more than
ten years, says Jonathon
Porritt, the prime minister's senior adviser
on the subject, today.
Writing in Guardian Society Mr Porritt, who
is the chairman of the
Sustainable Development Commission, says it
is hard to exaggerate the
damage done to the planet by Mr Bush's drive
for a "new world order".

On a whole series of issues including climate
change, international aid,
family planning, nuclear proliferation, trade
and corporate
responsibility, "staying true to a discredited
model of extreme economic
liberalism has set the world back a decade
or more", says Mr Porritt.

He says it is not surprising that the rest
of the world has done so
badly because Mr Bush has given them the perfect
"out" from their
responsibilities.

"Developing countries are increasingly disenchanted
with what they see
as a narrow, unfair and protectionist agenda,"
he says, "Japan is mired
in its own economic and political failure,
Russia plays the field for
whatever it can get out of it, and even the
EU has started to lose the
plot, with a least five countries seeking
to renege on their climate
commitments. ..."

Against this backdrop the British government
looks like a world leader
but even here the title of his report on progress
is Shows Promise: But
Must Try Harder.

The five-year review says that a lack of political
will and a failure to
understand that quality of life is not just
about economic growth has
led to slow progress towards the government's
sustainable development
goals. But Mr Porritt singles out Tony Blair's
leadership on climate
change and Gordon Brown's efforts on global
debt as bright spots.

He says that in some of the 15 areas he judges
the government on, for
example waste management and traffic, the
performance has been
"dreadful". Four areas "show promise" and
two - air quality and river
water - manage a "good". He accepts that the
government intends to do
more but it is not a brilliant picture.

"Far more effort needs to be made to differentiate
between smart growth
(that generates wealth and social benefits
without damaging the
environment) and today's wholly unsustainable
growth that inevitably
ends up damaging people's real quality of
life."

On this criterion he gives Britain's economic
growth a "poor" rating and
says eco-taxation policy has become bogged
down.

The government gets a "disappointing" rating
in four areas: employment,
because of longer working hours and gender
wage gaps; health, because
life expectancy in poor communities is not
rising; housing, because
energy efficiency is low; and greenhouse gas
emissions because of
increased traffic and air travel. The four
areas "showing promise" are
poverty reduction, education, wildlife and
land use.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...191321,00.html




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